timmy4 said:
Well you raise several issues:
1. No, I don't believe that registration leads to confiscation. Israel is a country which gun owners often cite, especially when making the argument that high private ownership of guns leads to lower violence. Israel has complete and full registration of all firearms, and there are strict gun control regulations in place. Neither of these have led to confiscation; in fact, private gun ownership has increased there to the point where it's nearly universal.
Very true. But, if I recall correctly, Israel has never passed (or seriously attempted) sweeping gun control measures. They require private ownership of arms for defense of the nation. For Israel to confiscate arms would be suicide.
But I present you Great Britain and Australia. They had required registration for nearly a century, and they slowly banned and confiscated firearms as the years progressed. So yes, registration does lead to confiscation. The anti-gun crowd is very vocal and powerful in the US. I don't see this changing anytime soon.
timmy4 said:
2. I believe that national registration would fight crime. It has in Israel and other countries as well. It allows the police to isolate illegal firearms.
How will it allow police to fight crime? Let's pretend, for a minute, that registration is 100% successful. Every gun in the US is registered. One my guns is stolen, used in a crime, and is at the crime scene. I report my gun stolen as soon as I find out. What will the registration do? The police know that I owned that gun, but I reported it stolen. Great. The police are back at square 1.
Now, I can see how registration might help bring the hammer down on straw purchasers. But we already have a system in place for that. A straw purchaser must fill out a form when he buys from a dealer. That record must be kept for 20 years. If the dealer goes out of business, all those forms are transferred to the ATF.
timmy4 said:
3. I don't like what the newspaper did. I believe that the database information should be protected from the FOIA, as are Social Security numbers.
Glad we agree on that.
timmy4 said:
4. For us to live in a safe society, what you own has to be the government's business. Should you be allowed to construct a bomb in your backyard, which, if it went off, would kill all of your neighbors as well as yourself? Should you be allowed to pour gasoline all over your house and then light a match? Obviously there has to be some limits. I do agree that private ownership is vital to this country, but all rights have limitations.
We don't live in a safe society. We live (well supposed to) in a free society.
And yes, I should be allowed to pour gasoline all over my home and light it. It's my property. I should be allowed to do with it as I please SO LONG AS (and this point is VERY important) IT DOES NOT NEGATIVELY AFFECT ANYONE ELSE! Setting off bombs in my back yard? That's fine, provided I don't blow up my neighbor's property. Burn my house down? Absolutely. I just need to make sure that my neighbor's house doesn't burn. A crime without a victim really isn't a crime, imo.
And yes, all rights do have limitations. But they can only be minimalistic, specific restrictions. There's a specific qualifier to that last statement, and I cannot, for the life of me remember what it is. It's something along the lines of restricting the rights so that people are prohibited from infringing on other's rights. There was a Supreme Court ruling on this. If someone could point me in the right direction, that would be great.
So let's play with my assumption for a minute. The government can restrict my rights only to prohibit me from infringing on the rights of others. How will registration ensure that I do not infringe on the rights of others.
